The Pile Of Cash That Everyone Wants To See Gone

Corporate America's large, un-spent cash-horde has become the latest obsession among economists and other pundits.

In theory, America has plenty of dry power, but as The Big Picture has pointed out, there's little compelling reason for corporate America to invest when there's so much slack and unused capacity in the system. Add in general unease, and you can see why the system is so stuck.

Now come up with a solution for what to do with the cash, and we might be able to get things going without more stimulus.

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Actually, Gold Isn't Just A Worthless Rock

Yesterday, money manager and writer James Altucher wrote a column slamming gold, arguing that ultimately it was just a worthless rock. And to back it up, he cited various periods when gold didn't return that much.

The folks at MF Mine Fund argue that Altucher cherry picked a period that coincided with the peak of the previous boom, and as such they've put together this chart, breaking the time since 1968 down to three periods. As you can see, only in the middle one do equities out perform. The norm over the last 40+ years is for gold to outperform.

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Here's Why Hyper Republicans Are Going To Crush The Democrats This Year

If elections are even half won simply by voter turnout, then this chart shows why the Democrats are toast this year. Republicans have far more momentum than at any other time in two decades, according to survey data from Pew Research.

56% of Republican voters are 'more enthusiastic' about voting this year, while only 42% of Dems are. This is shown below.

As usual, should the Democrats' voter turnout prove far weaker than the Republicans', then they'll have the young to blame:

Younger voters favor the Democratic candidate in their district by a wide margin, yet only half say they are certain to vote. People 50 and older heavily favor the Republican candidate and about eight-in-ten say they are certain to vote.

Come on, Dems... it's time to forget about 'policies' and just focus on rolling out P. Diddy with some more Vote Or Die shirts...

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There Are Far Better Places To Die Than America

A morbid survey from the Economist Intelligence Unit ranks countries by which would be the best place for a person to pass away. Basically, they've examined end-of-life care across the world, one area where the U.S. notoriously spends a fortune on.

Thing is, when it comes to 'quality of death' (end of life care), the U.S. is halfway down this list, and Britain takes the top slot.

For all the health-care system's faults, British doctors tend to be honest about prognoses. The mortally ill get plentiful pain killers. A well-established hospice movement cares for people near death, although only 4% of deaths occur in them. For similar reasons, Australia and New Zealand rank highly too.

China, Russia, Brazil, and India sit near the very bottom of the Economist's 40-nation ranking, mostly due to a lack of respect for 'dignity in death'. Still, if you're sufficiently wealthy then you can probably pay your way to a decent passing anywhere.

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The 60-Year-Old World Credit Bubble That Could Be Deflating Right Now

Worries are expanding over whether or not the global economic recovery is going to be able to persist with banks not lending to consumers. That lack of lending is a result of individuals, corporations, and banks preferring to pay off old debts rather than take on new debt or provide new loans.

The point of emphasizing it's from the end of WW2 is that we are not talking merely about a banking crisis, or whatever. We are talking about the deleveraging of the greatest economic/finance bubble in history. Once the level of leverage reached 60 to 1, it becomes impossible to stay ahead of the deleveraging, even for central banks. The implications are staggering. Every major economy in the world is involved. The outcomes of deleveraging this monster bubble, represented by the green oval, will be what I term Credit Crisis II. At 60 to 1 leverage, a loss of 1 to 2% wipes out the capital.

Laird does not specify what that leverage amounts to, but from our understanding it means total leverage within the world financial system. That means everything from individuals, to corporations, to banks and governments. That means, in this scenario, that the world currently stands at 60 to 1, where we are leveraged 60 to the 1 of real reserves we actually have.